A check for the Chinese version of WSJ — cn.wsj.com — on monitoring site GreatFire.org shows that the URL is blocked as of this weekend, although access may have first been restricted within the last month. The English-language version of the site remains accessible, suggesting the aim is to disrupt WSJ’s reach in China rather than shut it off entirely.

GreatFire tests the availability of selected URLs once per month and, though it recorded “contradictory” results twice this year, this marks the first instance that WSJ has been unavailable in China.

In comparison, it is not entirely clear what WSJ has done to elicit a block, or whether it will be permanent. Access to both the NYT China and main Bloomberg websites remain blocked in China to this day.

Owner Rupert Murdoch took to Twitter in February to lament the fact that the attacks were continuing days after WSJ bolstered its network security after its computer systems “had been infiltrated by Chinese hackers for the apparent purpose of monitoring the newspaper’s China coverage”.

China is notorious for blocking a range of Western Web services, including Facebook and Twitter. Google relocated its search service to Hong Kong in 2010 following allegations that the Chinese government hacked into email accounts belonging to activists.